Spy
From Populous Wiki
| Spy |
 |
| Life : 3 |
| Strength : 3 |
| Weak Scale : 1 |
A spy is the only follower who can disguise themselves into a color of an enemy tribe currently inhabiting the planet. The best bet to see these Followers are after the Level An Easy Target when the Spy Training Hut is invented by the Chumara Tribe, your next door neighbors in this Single Player Game.
The foreground of the attached picture shows the Blue Tribes Spy Training Hut, 4 Followers, of the Spy Grade. They are distinguished to the player as Followers in black jackets, pants and the accompanying color. To the enemy, they are seen as Braves. There main claim to fame is the ability for them to disguise as an enemy follower, sneak into an enemies base and light Huts or trees on fire.
To disguise simply select one Spy, or multiple spies, and click an enemy Tribes color on the left panel to the right of the shaman shortcut icon. The icon switches to a masking button and one simply right clicks and the spy's middle color slowly changes to the selected enemy Tribes color. You can only tell your Spy (or spies) to light trees and enemy Huts on fire, not your own. Simply select a Spy or spies, and approach a tree and left-click to set it ablaze. For enemy Huts, do the same procedure, approach a Hut, whilst disguised, and set it ablaze. If one is not disguised when attempting to set an enemy Huts ablaze, they will be quickly attacked.
The spies strength is the lowest of all units, 1 Brave can easily kill a Spy, bare handed in less than 6 seconds whilst leaving the Brave just at ¾ health. It approximately takes 3 spies to kill just one Brave.
The Spy lurking in ones base can be uncovered by simply finding one and left clicking them. Another tactic is to set a Spy in a Hut and lets them uncover spies attempting to gain entrance to ones base.
Putting a Spy in a Tower will unmask all enemy spies in a large area. Spies have the largest viewing range in a tower of all followers, making them excellent lookouts. Also, all the area under the spy's tower range will be cloaked from world view the same as Fog of War, hiding details about and building or followers in the area.
Tactics
Chaos Attack
Simply select a group of six spies and assign three too attack one side of an entrance, and another three to another side of an entrance, or divide up them by two, and make 2-2-2 to attack an enemy's base. Simply bookmark each new unit and start assigning each to set ablaze Huts Burn multiple Huts (Ctrl and left click three Huts) for the 1st group, five Huts for the 2nd and three Huts for the 3rd group, then further this by assigning each ones to attack separate Huts.
Multiple Burns
You can select multiple Huts for your spies to burn by holding ctrl then clicking each Hut. You may see the AI keep burning the same Hut, but a damaged Hut cannot be further damaged by burning. So multiple select the same Hut again to keep burning it even when it's damaged.